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Commitment to Equity

The mission of Hinsdale Township High School District 86 is to empower students to pursue their ideal future by acquiring critical skills and knowledge to collaborate, create and connect with an ever-changing world.We will accomplish this through coherent, deliberate, and intentional equity work that prioritizes the equality of opportunity and equality of outcome for every student. We define equity work as the act and art of providing each student with what they need to meet their learning and well-being requirements. We recognize that equity is not always providing all students with the same experience, rather all students receive what they need for their success.

By embracing our diversity, District 86 recognizes the importance of making and supporting significant shifts in mindset and practice to provide and sustain equitable outcomes for all students so that they may pursue their ideal future. By listening to our students, staff and community we acknowledge the importance of seeing, hearing and celebrating their identities in our curriculum, programs, pathways and school experiences.

To be a leader for equity in our policies, practices and curriculum, each stakeholder will proactively work to eliminate opportunity and achievement gaps, ensure success for all students by identifying and addressing personal and institutional bias and barriers, and provide strategies to ensure students of all races and cultures have equitable access to diverse educators, rigorous instruction, rich learning opportunities, social/emotional, academic and community supports, and resources to ensure success.

To achieve this purpose, we ground our equity work in the actions of the District 86 strategic plan:

Goal 1 - Student Growth and Achievement

  • Raising the academic achievement and social/emotional outcomes for all students while eliminating the historically predictable racial outcomes.
  • Designing and implementing a culturally responsive curriculum and pedagogy that interrupts racism and other systems of oppression and allows all students to see themselves in their schooling.
  • Identifying and removing barriers in our current policies, procedures, systems, and practices that limit opportunities for our students.

Goal 2 - Learning Environment

  • Developing a culture that promotes and sustains diversity, equity and inclusion in all student interactions and spaces.
  • Cultivating transformative social and emotional skills that empower students to have critically conscious discourse on diverse political and social topics in order to become engaged, active global citizens.

Goal 3 - Work Environment 

  • Recruiting, hiring, and retaining a diverse staff that more closely reflects the school community in terms of race, cultural background, linguistic skill, physical abilities and disabilities, sex, and sexual and gender identity. These recruitment goals seek a distribution of opportunities across all employee groups.
  • Providing professional development for all employees to identify, examine and eliminate institutional beliefs, policies and practices that perpetuate discrimination based on race, culture, religion, language, ability, gender and/or sexual identity.

Goal 4 - Family and Community Connections 

  • Regularly seeking and amplifying the voices of students, staff, families, and community members, especially from historically marginalized groups, to help make decisions that support the academic, physical, social and emotional growth of all learners.
  • Evolving the District 86 Culture and Equity Leadership Team’s (CELT) role as a school and community partnership to drive systemic accountability between the equity statement and the strategic plan.

Goal 5 - Resources

  • Utilizing an equity lens to distribute our resources based on the specific needs of our students, staff, and families instead of seeking to distribute them equally across the district.